15 Quotes by Charles H. Townes

Much public thinking follows a rut. The same thing is true in science. People get stuck and don't look in other directions.

One of the things my family taught me - I think very important in religion and science - is that you must be ready to stand up for what you think. Decide what you really think is best, and stick with it.

I was very eager to produce an oscillator for short waves. I was doing science with microwaves, and I would get down to a few millimetres in wavelength, but I wanted to get shorter wavelengths; I wanted to get into the infra-red because I saw there was a lot more to be done there.

I was brought up as Christian, and while my ideas have changed, I have always felt myself religiously oriented.

We can't avoid age. However, we can avoid some aging. Continue to do things. Be active. Life is fantastic in the way it adjusts to demands; if you use your muscles and mind, they stay there much longer.

There is some truth to the idea that, in the fields of science, individual contributions of great significance are possible.

Science is exploration. The fundamental nature of exploration is that we don't know what's there. We can guess and hope and aim to find out certain things, but we have to expect surprises.

Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them.

Alfred Nobel really understood very well the necessary supra-natural character of the human enterprise.